Chandra M. Manning on Soldiers and Slavery: Part 2

We finished our discussion of Manning’s article on Thursday. The students generally agreed with the argument, but noticed a few places that seemed to lack sufficient evidence. In the first part of the article Manning argues that explanations of hearth and home as a reason to join Confederate ranks should be interpreted as a concern with property and livelihood which connected directly to the preservation of slavery. My students thought that while Manning may be right they felt that the conclusion went too far beyond the evidence she provided. In other words, they wanted more proof.

We spent some time trying to make sense of Manning’s claim that while many Union soldiers were “abolitionized” by direct encounters with slavery in the South this “did not necessarily mean support for racial equality.” (James McPherson emphasizes the growing commitment to abolition among Union soldiers in his, For Cause and Comrades.) Manning goes on to emphasize that “white Union soldiers strove mightily to keep the issue of slavery and race separate.” This is a difficult distinction for students to grasp as they assume that one’s view of slavery and race is one and the same.

Perhaps the most controversial claim that Manning makes is that while Union soldiers identified in numerous ways with the nation as a whole, Confederates were routinely distracted by more local concerns such as the conscription bill, taxes, and impressment. This distinction is not designed to make a point about whether Southerners forged bonds of nationalism, but to emphasize that it was the preservation of slavery that could and did unite them. “Potential conflicts between personal interests and Confederate necessities were troubling, but resolvable,” argues Manning, “as long as Confederate troops remembered that the Union meant abolition, and abolition was worse than anything even the most disappointing Confederacy would impose.” And it is a short jump to the debate over black Confederates. Confederates could not fathom the recruitment of black soldiers given their commitment to white supremacy. Manning’s short analysis compliments the much more thorough interpretation by Bruce Levine in Confederate Emancipation. She is correct in noting that the proposed enlistment of only 25% of black male slaves between 18 and 45 was designed to guarantee that slavery would continue; this was not a debate over the future of the institution. The Union army’s decision to enlist black soldiers served to unite Confederates because they understood what it meant-nothing less than the leveling of the racial hierarchy. My research on Confederate reactions to black Union soldiers at the Crater confirms this beyond any doubt. (See my upcoming article on just this topic in the magazine America’s Civil War.)

I look forward to reading Manning’s dissertation in book form. It is sure to spark debate, not with academics who understand the centrality of slavery to the war, but with many lay readers who continue to imagine or wish for a sanitized narrative.

Note: (1) Manning is the first historian that I know who has utilized the John C. Winsmith letters from the Museum of the Confederacy. So much for the dust jacket with bold print: “For the first time. . . .” (2) Students are required to write an essay comparing Manning’s article with an earlier one by Reid Mitchell. (3) One of my students discovered that Manning is now teaching a course on the history of baseball; he thought that was pretty cool.

Share this Post

"In this stunning and well-researched book, Kevin Levin catches the new waves of the study of memory, black soldiers, and the darker underside of the Civil War as well as anyone has." -David Blight, author of Race and Reunion